Letter: From Here to Eternity

I am 75. All my life I have written lists. A few years ago, I completed my movies list. My original plan was to watch all the movies that interested me, then jot down their titles. There was a period in the late 1980s when I had a loving live-in girlfriend, and movie rentals came into being. For over two years, I (we) watched two a day. I have three lists in picture frames with 2,000 movies. After my former girlfriend (FG) moved away, I conducted a self-evaluation and concluded I would watch no more movies. I could return to my passion for reading and writing. (I wrote five published books and had three weekly newspaper columns.) The FG had been demanding of my time, and I never had any freedom. (My all-time favorite movie is From Here to Eternity, in case anyone is wondering).

One post-FG day, I gathered my book list and discovered I had read 286 books. As I read (nonfiction), I wrote down the title and author. I set a goal of 1,000 books. I am now at 931. I’m not sure what the plan will be after I read book number 1,000. I wonder if my body will burn faster in the crematorium because it has read 1,000 books and watched 2,000 movies. We’ll never know.